Relation of atherosclerotic changes in retinal arteries to the extent of coronary artery disease

The aim of this study was to explore the relation between atherosclerosis of the retinal arteries and the extent and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). In 109 patients, aged 40 to 80 years, who underwent coronary angiography for suspected CAD, the degree of retinal arterial atherosclerosis (stages 1 to 4 according to Scheie) was determined. The fundus examination was done using direct ophthalmoscopy by an ophthalmologist blinded to the extent of the CAD. The CAD extent was evaluated by Gensini score, and coronary angiograms were analyzed by 2 expert observers who had no knowledge of the patients' retinal artery status. The extent and severity of retinal vessel atherosclerosis correlated strongly with the extent and severity of CAD. Thus, atherosclerotic changes in the retinal arteries may be a predictor of the extent of CAD.     

Drug-Eluting Balloons–A New Tool in the Treatment of Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy: A Case Series

Percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with cardiac allograft vasculopathy is burdened with a lot of difficulties. Although they have allowed significant progress in comparison with plain balloon angioplasty and bare metal stents, drug-eluting stents have not fully overcome problems of diffuse lesions and small-vessel disease that are so common in transplant coronary artery disease. There is growing evidence that drug-eluting balloons might be a better choice for patients with small vessel atherosclerotic coronary disease and yet there is no experience with this technology in patients with cardiac allograft vasculopathy. Herein we report a case series of successful percutaneous coronary interventions in patients with cardiac allograft vasculopathy.     

Changes in short-term memory processes in patients with multiple sclerosis

In this study we compared the performance of 39 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with 28 age-, sex- and education-matched controls on both the Mini-Mental State Examination, a global cognitive assessment tool, and the Sternberg Short-Term memory scanning task, a standardized test of short-term memory (STM) processes. While the STM span of our MS patients did not differ from that of our controls, STM scanning time of the MS group was reliably slower than that of the controls and a significant correlation was observed between STM scanning time and duration but not severity of illness. Our results suggest that processing stages other than the manipulation of data within the STM buffer are also affected by MS.     

Outcome prediction of advanced mantle cell lymphoma by international prognostic index versus different mantle cell lymphoma indexes: one institution study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of international prognostic index (IPI), mantle cell lymphoma IPI (MIPI), simplified MIPI (sMIPI), and MIPI biological (MIPIb), as well as their correlation with immunophenotype, clinical characteristics, and overall survival (OS), in a selected group of 54 patients with advanced-stage mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), treated uniformly with CHOP. Seventeen patients had IV clinical stage (CS), while other 37 had leukemic phase at presentation. Diffuse type of marrow infiltration was verified in 68.5% and nodular in remainder patients. Extranodal localization (25.9%) included bowel (20.4%), pleural effusion, sinus, and palpebral infiltration. All of analyzed patients expressed typical MCL immunophenotypic profile: CD19(+)CD20(+)CD22(+)CD5(+)Cyclin-D1(+)FMC7(+)CD79b(+)smIg(+)CD38(+/-)CD23(-)CD10(-). Median OS of the whole group was 23 months, without significant differences between IV CS and leukemic phase patients. Thirty-two patients (59.3%) responded to initial treatment, 9 (16.7%) with complete and 23 (42.6%) with partial remission. Negative prognostic influence on OS had high IPI (P < 0.01), high sMIPI (P < 0.001), MIPI (P < 0.01), MIPIb (P < 0.01), extranodal localization (P < 0.01), and diffuse marrow infiltration (P < 0.01). Testing between randomly selected groups showed that patients with lower proportion of CD5(+) cells (<80%) correlated with cytological blastoid variant and had shorter survival comparing with the group with higher proportion of CD5(+) cells (>80%) (P < 0.01). Using univariate Cox regression, we proved that IPI, sMIPI, MIPI, and MIPIb had an independent predictive importance (P < 0.01) for OS in uniformly treated advanced MCL patients, although sMIPI prognostic significance was the highest (P < 0.001).